9
Katie sat at her desk idly rolling her pen between her fingers. Virginia was attending the Friday morning operations meeting, which gave Katie until ten-thirty to make up her mind. An hour and a half to decide whether to resign her job or request two weeks’ vacation and two additional weeks’ leave of absence without pay.
She knew what Ramon wanted—no, expected—her to do. He expected her to resign, to make the break and sever all ties. If she merely requested a month off instead of resigning, he would feel that she was not committing herself wholeheartedly to him, that she was keeping an avenue of escape open to her.
Her mind drifted back to the way Ramon had looked at her this morning when he arrived to take her to work. His dark eyes had studied her face with piercing intensity. “Have you changed your mind?” he had asked, and when Katie replied that she hadn’t, he had gathered her into his arms and kissed her with a mixture of violent sweetness and profound relief.
Each moment she spent with Ramon she grew closer to him emotionally. Her heart, for whatever reasons, kept telling her that he was right for her, that what she was doing was right. Her mind, however, was screaming warnings at her. It told her this was happening too fast, too soon, and worse, kept tormenting her that Ramon was not what he seemed to be, that he was hiding something from her.
Katie’s blue eyes clouded. This morning he had arrived wearing a beautiful loose-sleeved gold golf sweater. Twice before he had worn well-tailored business suits. It seemed so peculiar that a farmer, particularly an impoverished one, would own such clothes that Katie had bluntly asked him about it.
Ramon had smilingly informed her that farmers owned suits and sweaters just like other men. Katie had tentatively accepted that answer, but when she tried to find out more about him, he had evaded her questions by saying, “Katie, you will have many questions about me and about your future, but the answers are all in Puerto Rico.”
Leaning back in her chair, Katie somberly watched the controlled bustle of activity in the personnel reception area where applicants were filling out forms, taking tests and waiting to see Katie or one of her five male counterparts who all reported to Ginny.
Perhaps she was wrong to be uneasy about Ramon. Perhaps he wasn’t being deliberately evasive. Perhaps this niggling, persistent fear was simply the result of her gruesome experience with marriage to David Caldwell.
Then again, maybe it wasn’t. She would have to find out in Puerto Rico, but until all her fears were resolved, she could not risk resigning her job. If she did resign today she would be resigning without notice. If she resigned without notice, she would not be eligible for rehire at Technical Dynamics, nor would she get a good reference from them if she tried to go to work for another employer. Besides, Virginia would look like an absolute fool when she had to explain to the vice-president of operations, who had just approved Katie’s enormous raise, that Katie, Virginia’s own protégée, had resigned without notice—like the most irresponsible transient who swept the floors.
Katie stood up, absently ran a smoothing hand over her elegant chignon, and walked out into the reception area, past Donna and the two other secretaries who worked in personnel. Going into one of the cubicles where typing tests were given, she rolled a clean sheet of paper into the electric typewriter and stared at it, her hands poised indecisively over the keys.
Ramon was expecting her to resign. He had said he loved her. Equally as important, Katie sensed instinctively that he needed her; he needed her very much. She felt disloyal merely taking a month off. She considered lying to him about it, but honesty mattered very much to Ramon and it was something that mattered a great deal to Katie too. She didn’t want to lie to him. On the other hand, after she had agreed last night to go to Puerto Rico and marry him, she couldn’t imagine how to explain her doubts and misgivings this morning. She wasn’t even certain it would be wise to tell him how she felt yet. If she had told David that she suspected some hidden side to his character, he would have gone out of his way to conceal it and convince her otherwise. It seemed far better to simply go to Puerto Rico and give herself time to know Ramon better. With time, her doubts would either be resolved or her suspicions would be confirmed.
Sighing, Katie tried to think of a better excuse to give Ramon for her decision not to resign. It came to her in a flash of inspiration. It was the truth; it relieved all her feelings of disloyalty to Ramon, and it was something she would be able to make him understand. It was so obvious that Katie was amazed she had even considered resigning without notice.
Quickly and efficiently she typed out a formal request to Virginia for two weeks’ vacation beginning the next day, followed by two weeks’ leave of absence without pay. Tonight she would simply explain to Ramon that she could not possibly have resigned without notice in order to get married. Men did not resign without notice to get married, and if Katie did it would reflect badly on all the other women who were struggling so desperately for an equal opportunity to obtain positions in management. One of the most frequent arguments against hiring a woman in a management position was that they quit to get married or to have babies or to follow their husband when he was transferred. The director of operations was a closet male chauvinist. If Katie resigned without notice to get married, he would never let poor Virginia forget it, and he’d find some legally acceptable reason to disqualify any other female candidate Virginia wanted to hire for Katie’s job. If, on the other hand, Katie resigned while on vacation in Puerto Rico, the two weeks remaining to her as leave of absence would constitute two weeks’ notice. That meant she would have only two weeks to resolve her fear about marrying Ramon.
Nevertheless, Katie felt tremendously relieved. Now that she’d thought about it rationally, she decided that when and if she did resign while in Puerto Rico, she would not say that she was doing so to get married. She would say what men always said: she was resigning “to accept a better position.”
Having decided that, Katie wound another sheet of paper into the typewriter, and dating it two weeks hence, formally resigned in order to accept a better position.
It was nearly eleven-thirty before Katie was finished with the applicants she was scheduled to interview. Picking up her vacation request and her postdated resignation, she walked into Virginia’s office, then hesitated.
Virginia was engrossed in recording figures on a huge ledger sheet, her dark head of short-cropped hair bent over the task. She looked, as she always did, businesslike and feminine. The Dainty Dynamo, Katie thought with affection.
Straightening her navy blazer and smoothing the pleats of her red-and-blue-plaid skirt, Katie plunged in. “Ginny, can you spare me a few minutes?” she asked nervously, using the nickname she ordinarily used only after business hours.
“If it’s not urgent, give me half an hour to finish this report first,” Ginny replied without looking up.
With each second Katie’s tension was mounting. She didn’t think she could last another half hour. “It—it’s rather important.”
At the shakiness in Katie’s voice, Ginny quickly raised her head. Very slowly, she laid her pen on the desk and watched Katie approach, her forehead creased with puzzled concern.
Now that the time had come, Katie couldn’t think how to begin. She handed Virginia her vacation-leave-of-absence request.
Virginia scanned it, the vague alarm clearing from her forehead. “It’s short notice to request a month off,” Ginny said, laying the paper aside. “But you’re entitled to the vacation, so I’ll approve it. Why are you also requesting two weeks’ leave of absence?”
Katie sank into the chair in front of Virginia’s desk. “I want to go to Puerto Rico with Ramon. While I’m there I’ll decide whether or not to marry him. In case I do decide to do that—here’s my resignation. The two weeks’ leave of absence can serve as my notice, that is, if you’ll let me do it that way.”
Virginia sank back in her chair and stared at Katie in astonishment. “Who?” she said.
“The man we talked about on Wednesday.” When Virginia continued to stare at her incredulously, Katie explained, “Ramon has a small farm in Puerto Rico. He wants me to marry him and live there.”
Virginia said “My God.”
Katie, who had never seen Virginia like this, added helpfully, “He’s Spanish, actually.”
Virginia said “My God” again.
“Ginny!” Katie implored desperately. “I know this is sudden, but it’s not that unbelievable. It’s—”
“Insane,” Virginia announced flatly, at last recovering her brisk composure. She shook her head as if to clear it. “Katie, when you mentioned this man two days ago I imagined him as not only handsome, but having a style and sophistication to match yours. Now you tell me that he’s a Puerto Rican farmer, and you’re going to be his wife?”
Katie nodded.
“I think you’ve lost your mind, but at least you have sense enough not to resign and burn all your bridges behind you. In four weeks, or much less, you’ll regret this insanely romantic—and utterly absurd—impulse. You know I’m right or you wouldn’t be asking for a leave, you’d be resigning.”
“It isn’t insane and it isn’t an impulse,” Katie said, her eyes pleading with Ginny to understand. “Ramon is different—”
“I’ll bet he is!” Ginny agreed disdainfully. “Latin men are impossibly chauvinistic.”
Katie ignored that because she already knew that Ramon was very Latin and very chauvinistic. “Ramon is special,” she said, embarrassed at trying to put the way she felt about him into words, “He makes me feel special too. He isn’t shallow or self-centered like most of the men I’ve known.” Seeing that Ginny was no more convinced than she was before, Katie added, “Ginny, he loves me; I can feel that he does. And he needs me. I—”
“Of course he needs you!” Ginny scoffed. “He’s a small-time farmer who can’t afford to pay for a cook, housekeeper and bedmate. Therefore, he needs a wife, who for the mere cost of her room and board will be all three.” Instantly, Ginny held up an apologetic hand. “I’m sorry, Katie, I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t impose my own views of matrimony on you. It’s just that I honestly feel you could never be content with that sort of life, not when you’ve had this.”
“This isn’t enough for me, Ginny,” Katie said with quiet assurance. “Long before I met Ramon, I felt that way. I can’t seem to be happy devoting all my time to me—my career, my next promotion, my future. It isn’t that it’s a lonely life, because I’m not lonely at all. It’s an empty life; I feel useless and meaningless.”
“Do you know how many women long for exactly what you have? Do you know how many women wish they had only themselves to think about?”
Katie nodded, uncomfortably aware that she was indirectly rejecting Ginny’s way of life, as well as her own. “I know. Maybe it would be right for them. It isn’t right for me.”
Ginny glanced at her watch and regretfully stood up. “I’ve got to hurry, I’m due at a meeting downtown, and I won’t be back until after you’ve left. don’t worry about calling me within two weeks. Give yourself all four of those weeks. If you decide to resign, I’ll simply put this in your file and say that you gave it to me in advance. It’s bending company policy, but what are friends for?” She skimmed the letter and smiled at Katie’s reason for resignation. “ ‘To accept a better position,’ ” she quoted. “Very nicely done.”
Katie stood up too, her eyes aching with sentimental tears. “In that case, I guess this is goodbye.”
“No, Katie,” Ginny said with a laugh as she began shoving papers into her slim briefcase. “Two weeks from now you’ll begin getting bored. Four weeks from now you’ll miss the challenge of your career. You’ll be back. In the meantime, have a nice vacation—that’s all you really needed, anyway. you’re just a little tired. I’ll see you in a month—or sooner.”
At 5:05 Katie plunged through the revolving glass doors and dashed across the pavement to where Ramon had pulled the car up at the curb to wait for her. She slid into the seat, bravely met his inquiring look and said, “I took a month’s vacation instead of resigning.”
His jaw tightened and Katie twisted in her seat to face him. “The reason I did was that—”
“Not now!” he snapped curtly. “We will discuss it when we get to your apartment.”
They walked into her apartment together, neither of them having spoken a word during the thirty-five-minute ride home. Katie’s frayed nerves stretched taut as she put her purse down, shrugged out of the navy blazer, and turned toward him. Aware of his smoldering anger, she asked cautiously, “Where do you want me to begin?”
His hands shot out, gripping her arms. “Begin with why,” he ordered harshly, giving her a shake. “Tell me why!”
Katie managed to keep her fear-widened blue eyes on his. “Please don’t look at me this way. I know you’re hurt and you’re angry, but you shouldn’t be.” Reaching out, she ran her hands up beneath the soft material of his gold golf sweater, her palms flattened against his muscular chest, trying somehow to soothe and gentle him.
The gesture backfired. Ramon jerked her hands away. “Do not try to distract me with your touch, it will not work. This is not a game we are playing!”
“I’m not playing games!” Katie shot back, pulling her hands from his grip with a strength that was fortified by her own simmering anger. “If I wanted to play games with you, I would have lied and told you that I had resigned.” Stalking away from him to the center of the room, Katie stopped and whirled around. “I decided to request four weeks off so that I could resign from Puerto Rico for several very important reasons.
“In the first place, Virginia Johnson is not only my boss, she is someone whom I like and respect immensely. If I resign without notice, I’ll make Ginny look like a complete fool.”
Katie’s chin lifted stubbornly as she continued her angry, impassioned speech. “And what about the men? If I quit without notice, it gives them all a perfect reason to feel vindicated and superior because men don’t run off to get married. I absolutely refuse to be a traitor to my own sex! So . . . when I resign from Puerto Rico with notice I will say that I am leaving to ‘accept a better position.’ Which I happen to think being your wife is!” Katie finished defiantly.
“Thank you,” Ramon said almost humbly. Smiling, he started walking toward her.
Katie, who had worked herself into a fine temper, began backing away. “I haven’t finished yet,” she said, her color gloriously high, her eyes stormy with hurt indignation. “You told me you wanted honesty from me at all times, and when I was honest you bullied and intimidated me. If I’m supposed to be completely truthful, I have to know that no matter how bad the truth is, you aren’t going to get angry with me for telling it to you. You were unfair and unreasonable a few minutes ago, and I think you have an impossible temper!”
“Are you finished now?” Ramon asked her gently.
“No, I’m not!” Katie said, all but stamping her foot. “When I touched you, I was only trying to feel close to you. I wasn’t playing games and I hated the way you treated me!” Having now exhausted her complaints, Katie glowered past his shoulder, refusing to meet his gaze.
Ramon’s voice was coaxing and deep. “Would you like to touch me now?”
“Not in the least.”
“Even if I say that I am very sorry, and that I want you to touch me?”
“No.”
“You no longer wish to be close to me, Katie?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Look at me.” Ramon’s fingers touched her chin, turning her face up to his. “I hurt you, and now you have hurt me back, and we both ache. We can either strike out at each other in our pain until our anger is spent, or we can stop now and begin to teach each other how to heal our hurts. I do not know which way you want it.”
Gazing up into his intent eyes Katie realized that he meant that literally; he wanted her to decide whether to turn their battle into a war that would last until their tempers were exhausted, or else tell him what to do or say to soothe her. Katie stared, the gracefully feminine curves of her face vulnerable and uncertain, her eyes deep blue with confusion. Finally she swallowed and bravely said, “I—I would like you to put your arms around me.”
With aching gentleness, Ramon drew her into the circle of his arms.
“And I would like you to kiss me.”
“How?” he breathed softly.
“With your lips,” Katie answered, confused by the question.
His mouth brushed hers sensuously, his lips warm but not parted.
“And your tongue,” she clarified breathlessly.
“Will you give me yours?” he asked, beginning to tell her how he wanted his hurt soothed.
Katie nodded, and his mouth opened hungrily over hers, their tongues tangling and caressing. His hands stroked restlessly over her shoulders and back, then down her spine, forcing her hips hard against his pulsing thighs. His mouth devoured hers as he pulled her down onto the sofa to lie across his lap, his fingers fumbling with the tiny buttons on her silk blouse. Impatient with the buttons, his hand returned to her breasts. “Unfasten them,” he said in a low, urgent voice.
It seemed to take Katie forever to unbutton her blouse because her hands were trembling, and Ramon never stopped kissing her. When the last one was finally undone, he pulled his mouth from hers and whispered unsteadily, “I want you to take it off for me.”
Katie’s heart began hammering as she pulled her arms from the sleeves, letting the white silk slide through her shaking fingers. Ramon’s gaze dipped to her lacy bra. “That too.”
With fire racing through every nerve in her body, Katie unclipped her bra and slowly slid it down her arms. The ivory globes of her breasts swelled proudly beneath his possessive gaze, her nipples slowly hardening as if his fingers, rather than just his eyes, were touching them. Ramon watched them, his eyes burning with passion, his voice rough with it. “I want to see my baby at your breast.”
Katie’s embarrassment over her body’s obvious response to him was eclipsed by the violent yearnings surging through her. Drawing a quivering breath, she said, “Right now, I would rather see you there.”
“Give it to me, Katie.”
An uncontrollable inner excitement shook her as she curved a hand around his nape, pulling his dark head down and simultaneously lifting her breast, offering her nipple to him. When Ramon began to suck on it, she almost screamed with the raw pleasure. By the time his lips released her, desire was running through her veins like molten steel. “Give me the other one,” he ordered thickly.
Katie tremblingly cupped her other breast and lifted it to his mouth. The moment his lips covered it, flames shot through her. “Please stop,” she cried softly. “I need you, I can’t stand any more.”
“You can’t?” he breathed, swiftly lowering her to lie on the sofa, his mouth exquisitely exploring her ear, the curve of her neck and cheek, as he lay down beside her. Lost in a frenzy of rampaging desire, Katie felt his hands sliding up under her skirt, pulling the elastic lace band of her panties down from her hips to her lower thighs.
Ramon groaned softly as his fingers traced between her thighs. “You want me,” he corrected. “You want me but you do not need me yet,” he breathed, plundering her mouth with demanding insistence.
Katie was almost sobbing with desire for his possession, her hands feverishly rushing over the taut muscles of his back and shoulders. “I need you,” she whispered fiercely, crushing her parted lips to his. “Please—”
Ramon raised his head and said almost gruffly, “You do not need me.” Taking one of her hands from around his neck, he pressed it tightly against his rigid arousal. “That is need, Katie.”
Opening her desire-glazed eyes, Katie focused on his strained face as he said, “You want me when I take you in my arms, but I need you every moment of every hour. It is an ache that never leaves me; a longing to make you mine that ties me into knots.” Abruptly he asked, “Do you know what fear is?”
Bewildered by his sudden change of subject, Katie searched his handsome somber features, but did not attempt to reply.
“Fear is knowing that I have no right to want you, and knowing that I cannot stop myself. Fear is dreading the moment when you will see the small cottage where you will have to live and decide you do not want me enough to live there.”
“Don’t think that way,” Katie pleaded, her fingers smoothing the short hair at his temple. “Please don’t.”
“Fear is lying awake at night, wondering if you will decide not to marry me, and wondering how I will bear the pain.” Gently, he brushed away the tear that trickled from the corner of Katie’s eye. “I am afraid of losing you, and if it makes me ‘unreasonable’ and bad-tempered, then I humbly apologize. It is only because I am afraid.”
Melting with tenderness, Katie laid her hand against his jaw and gazed deeply into his dark eyes. “In my whole life,” she whispered, “I have never known a man with enough courage to admit he’s afraid.”
“Katie. . . .” Her name was a hoarse groan that tore from his chest as his mouth came down hard and hungry on hers, his lips and hands fiercely urgent now, guiding her toward the peak of fulfillment, driving her as close to the edge as she was deliberately driving him. And then the doorbell rang.
“Don’t answer it!” Katie implored when he immediately pulled out of her arms and sat up. “They’ll go away.”
Slanting her a rueful smile, Ramon combed his hand through the side of his thick hair, restoring it to order. “No, they will not. In the . . . excitement . . . I forgot to tell you that your parents were coming over to help us pack and then have dinner with us.”
Katie jackknifed to her feet, scooping up her clothing as she dashed to the bedroom. “Hurry and let them in or they’ll guess what we were doing,” Katie told him when she saw that Ramon was merely standing near the sofa, his hands on his hips.
“Katie,” he said with a wicked grin, “if I let them in too quickly, they will see what we were doing.”
“What?” she asked, standing in the doorway to her room, her perplexed gaze sweeping over the sofa for incriminating evidence, then the floor, then over Ramon. “Oh!” she said, blushing like a schoolgirl.
Katie pulled off her clothes in mad haste, telling herself that she was being absolutely absurd. She was twenty-three years old, she had been married before, and she was going to marry Ramon. No doubt her parents assumed they had already made love many times. After all, her parents were modern, sensible people. Very modern and sensible—except where their children’s behavior was concerned.
Exactly four minutes after the doorbell rang, Katie strolled out of her room wearing tan slacks and a soft cream jersey turtleneck, her hair brushed into a shining mantle around her shoulders. She managed to give her mother a cheery greeting, but her face was still slightly flushed, her eyes suspiciously languorous, and inwardly she was trembling with little aftershocks of desire.
She found Ramon, who appeared to be feeling none of her sensual sensitivity, fixing drinks for the four of them in the kitchen, laughing about something with her father. “I’ll bring these drinks into the living room,” Ryan Connelly said, picking up two glasses. Turning, he discovered his bemused daughter staring at her fiance’s profile. “Honey, you look radiant,” he said, planting an affectionate kiss on Katie’s forehead. “Ramon must be good for you.”
Hot color ran up under Katie’s cheeks as she smiled helplessly at her father. Waiting until he vanished into the living room, Katie turned to Ramon, who was putting ice into two more glasses. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. Without looking at her, he said, “You are blushing, querida. And you do look radiant.”
“Thank you,” Katie said in exasperated amusement. “I look as though I’ve been ravished, and you look as though you’ve been reading the newspaper! How can you be so calm?” She started to reach for the drink Ramon had just fixed her, but he put it on the counter beside his. Turning, he drew her tightly into his arms for a long, drugging kiss. “I am not calm, Katie,” he whispered against her mouth, “I am starving for you.”
“Katie?” her mother called from the living room, causing Katie to pull awkwardly out of Ramon’s embrace. “Are you two coming in here, or should we wait out on the patio?”
“We’re coming in there,” Katie answered hastily. With a laughing look at Ramon, Katie said, “I once read a novel where every time the man and woman began to make love, the phone rang; someone came to the door; or something happened to stop them.”
Ramon’s grin was lazily amused. “It will not happen to us. I will not permit it.”